GoKawiilAs systems increasingly connect with non-human identities (NHI) and artificial intelligence agents, Delinea has expanded the capabilities of its privilege access management (PAM) platform with the acquisition of rival StrongDM. The deal, announced in January for an undisclosed sum, closed on March 5.
The addition of StrongDM's just-in-time (JIT) proxy-based access platform promises to extend Delinea's identity security capabilities beyond traditional vault-centric PAM. Delinea's Secret Server is currently designed as a vault that maintains permissions and enables users to check out static credentials.
StrongDM inserts ephemeral, real-time credentials through a developer-focused workflow, enabling Delinea to govern privileged actions across diverse environments without interrupting engineers' workflows. Its architecture provides a zero-trust, protocol-aware proxy designed to manage, secure, and audit access to databases, servers, Kubernetes clusters and web applications.
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"The old PAM world was about giving IT admins access to a limited set of servers," says 451 Research principal analyst Garrett Bekker. But with increased cloud deployment, users now need access to tools such as Kubernetes clusters and other services, he explains: "The pool of users has expanded dramatically."
Delinea CEO Art Gilliland tells Dark Reading that StrongDM's primary innovation is its ability to establish a proxy between users and target systems, including SaaS platforms and databases, thereby enabling the addition of real-time credentials without interrupting modern developer workflows.
"StrongDM created a workflow and an architecture that uses keystroke methods to be able to request passwords and get access to sensitive systems while meeting compliance requirements," Gilliand says.
Both a Unified Platform and Standalone Product
With the proliferation of AI agents in enterprise systems and applications, Gilliland envisions Delinea, with the addition of StrongDM, governing these agents the same way it governs humans. Gilliand says StrongDM's architecture understands the agents' intent and therefore grants minimal privileges only when they're needed, immediately preventing unapproved actions.
"We empower humans and machines to work how they want to, without friction," says StrongDM CEO Tim Prendergast. He emphasizes that StrongDM aligns with developer-first, enterprise-grade security requirements.
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